Nick Clegg says we must "cut the welfare for the rich" first but in throwing the children overboard by increasing the tuition fees he has showed where his loyalties really lie and any such attacks on them will be used eventually to remove such 'benefits' from the poor. It is classic divide and rule tactics. Even Ed Balls has reiterated this position, proving that there is no choice when it comes to politics, just puppets that share the same mask.

Privatisation is the vehicle that politicians use to move money from the public into the pockets of their criminal profiteer mates in the private sector. Spurious claims that the private sector have created 1.2million jobs are statistics manipulated to sell us their lies. This usually means that half of these jobs were once public sector posts now syphoned off and the rest are probably job shared posts with two people working one job but it doubles the economies labour statistics. Businesses have then been paid off by the government for doing such things. One such example of jobs being privatised is the current sell of of Royal Mail where there are more strikes planned over cuts and job security. Royal Mail is worth billions with its parcel delivery service making money hand over fist, yet the government want to sell it off.

900,000 more people joined the millions already in the UK considered to live in poverty, going to show that politicians want to throw us overboard without a life jacket, we are surplus to requirements. You might be lucky enough to get a food stamp for a food bank but you must meet a certain criteria, in the mean time the head of the DWP Iain Duncan-Smith is eating £39 breakfasts and telling us we can live on £53 pound a week. When are people going to start pointing their fingers at these criminals and thieves?

The Fire Minister Brandon Lewis' office was visited by a concerned group of humans who wanted to discuss cuts, privatisation and the pensions attacks agenda. He responded on a radio broadcast and deflected the situation by talking about gold plated pensions. None of which was true.

Health and Welfare
An elderly care centre, Mosaic Community Care, is under investigation after a row about the care of an elderly lady. They have been apparently suspended by the UK Homecare Association which means they will be no longer recommending Mosaic Community Care for elderly people whilst the suspension stands.Economics

Pensioners took a kicking this week in The Times on Saturday, Michael Parris has said that it is the pensioner (and not the banking terrorists) that have stolen the futures of the young. The Murdoch agenda is supported generously by the supposedly unbiased BBC who ran a story stating that pensioners are the only group to have received a steady increase in income over the past thirty years. They are framing the agenda for the largest assault on your pensions and savings in a generation, they want it all back and it looks like they will get it because people, for the most part, are too busy sleeping to see it. That is why George Carlin called it "The American Dream."

World
Erdogan told the Turkish protesters to go home or else and was met with a show of defiance as thousands descended on Gezi Park to show him what they thought of his views on democracy. This resulted in more blood shed as the fascists used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds.

Technology
Google is looking to provide remote parts of the world with the internet by supplying 'near space balloons' to bridge the gap. Presumably they can afford it with the amount of tax payments they have been dodging in the UK.

Man of Steel opened this week, just two days before Fathers Day, to rave reviews from fans but mixed opinions from the so called experts. It is not the fourth Dark Knight movie as some of them may have expected but then Superman is very different to other super heroes, his story is one of the light and righteousness. It is who he is. Check it out.

Sunday, 16 June 2013

Not content with the blood of thousands of Iraqi's and soldiers from the US and the UK on his hands, war criminal Tony Blair, who made millions from the occupation and invasion of Iraq, has called for the west to intervene in Syria.

Any time a war criminal such as Tony Blair call for intervention, you can guarantee that it has nothing to do with humanitarian aid or democracy, but everything to do with the stealing of resources. The man has a position as the Middle East Peace envoy, the irony for which should not be lost on any of us.

There is also the small matter of the gassing of the people in Bahrain and Turkey, where their empty canisters have 'made in in England' written on the side of them. War is the only thing we seem to be exporting these days.

Not to scale - Netanyahu Warner Brothers cartoon bomb

For months there has been speculation as to if and by whom chemical weapons have been used by and all of a sudden we have confirmation that it is at the hands of Assad's military. The timing could not have been sweeter for the imperialist forces as this coincides with the advancement by Assad's troops with the assistance of Hezbollah and they also happen to be a close ally with Iran. Iran have also just undergone an election with Ahmadinejad's tenure coming to an end.

Tony Blair's solution to all this is to export peace bombs, claiming that he is from an "interventionist area of politics" whatever we may think of that and he also called for the removal of the Iranian regime as they are a destabilising influence on the region.
The volatile nature of the region has nothing to do with drones blowing up people then does it Tony? Tony Blair has amassed millions through the deaths of innocent Iraqi's and British and US troops, along with his war criminal friend George W. Bush. The current crop continuing the 'special relationship', Obama and Cameron, are following along the same blood thirsty pursuit of power and control over resources.

Violence begets violence and using war to solve a crises has only ever lead to greater humanitarian issues in the long run, as infrastructure is destroyed, countless millions of people are displaced and the wars of terror lead to mistrust and hatred of everyday people in the West. The only way for us to solve terrorism is to first stop engaging in acts of terror.

Friday, 14 June 2013

Laurie Penny was interviewed this week by the Artist Taxi Driver for his documentary in progress, 'This is not a recession, this is a robbery' and she made two great and fascinating points; the first was about the erosion of empathy being part of the capitalist project and how psychological damage that is being created by society is never factored into mental illness.

A fascinating statement and one I believe rings true. To lack empathy is to be a psychopath and may explain the decisions made by the people running this planet.

Empathy is hardwired into us and the RSA, Empathic Civilisation, explains this brilliantly. We witness it during everyday occurrences without noticing we are doing it, any time you have watched a spider crawl across someones arm and got that shivery feeling, that is empathy or when you see someone take a particularly hard tackle during a sporting event and you can "feel the pain", it is our empathic capabilities coming through.

What the war criminals and scoundrels seem to be doing is re-wiring our empathic civilisation to desensitise us to the horrors they conduct on our behalf the world over.

These claims may sound like psycho babble to some but there is a weight of evidence out there to prove the brains ability be re-wried according to its environment. One such study has been conducted and reported by the Daily Mail of all agencies into the increasingly aggressive appearance of Lego characters today and that they may be harming a child's development. A documentary called Secret History of the Brain: Emotion, also covered this aspect of violence and programming of children. This showed scenes of children playing nicely together who then witness an adult attack a doll. They then replicate this behaviour with the most violent reactions occurring if the adult is of the same sex. It is called the bobo doll test and perhaps unsurprisingly the results were repeated by children who witnessed the same violence on television as opposed to witnessing it in the flesh. These reactions can be tempered by empathy as it develops within us as we reflect upon what we witness, the problem is the constant bombardment and violent environment we live in is hampering this. The problem is 360º immersive advertising and is investigated at length by the documentary Consuming Kids.

Make him angry, he'll make you angry

The re-wiring of the brain has also been discussed recently on BBC R4 which has been running a series called The Science of Music. The latest episode asked the question on how our brains are re-wired through music and explained that musicians are the perfect example of how the brain can be re-programmed according to what it called environment. We are all products of our environment whatever you may think.

By flooding our environment with violence, demonising the poor and highlighting our cultural differences, the establishment is able to manipulate and control us and our feelings, so that we are less likely to share empathy with people put into poverty by our governments, killed by our governments and arbitrarily locked away by our governments. We have to start seeing that we are more alike than we are different and that there are no problems but human problems, we are empathic by nature but it is being destroyed through nurture. An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.

You can follow Laurie Penny and The Artist Taxi driver on Twitter; @PennyRed and @chunkymark

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

You know the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum when a woman debating the banning of the Sun's Page Three in the Houses of Scoundrels today is told to cover up and abide by house dress rules because she is wearing a 'no more Page Three' t-shirt.

This is what happened today when Caroline Lucas MP showed up Labour's Jimmy Hood and highlighted the irony of the situation to him that you could buy the Sun magazine (as she put it) in West Minster but you cannot wear a t-shirt. there are apparent dress codes within the Commons and slogan baring t-shirts fall outside of this code. Any points to be made should be made via their speeches but sometimes a picture tells a thousand words and was very much the case today.

Cover up m'lady

Culture minister Ed Valzey said there would be no press regulation and that the interference of an adults choice in what they read infringed their human rights, highly amusing considering our government has been in cahoots with the US in the eavesdropping of largely innocent people following the Prism scandal this week. Everyone from William Hague to David Cameron and Barack Obama were caught blatantly lying over the issue and subsequently shrugged it off, saying if we are doing no wrong then we have nothing to fear. You could not make it up.

No More Page Three say that "boobs are not news" and they are right, neither is X-factor, Britain's Got Talent, The Voice, Dancing on Ice, Strictly Come Dancing (no matter how pretty Flavia is) or any of the hundred and one other items our media ram down our throats to distract us whilst the government and the private profiteers make off with our money.

Today Caroline Lucas made a great display of civil disobedience and it is something we should all aspire to engage in if we are to challenge our oppressors.

Breakfast television has become a place for the media to demonise the poor, I cannot remember if it was always this way, but every morning in the gym I glance up at the monitors and see the subtitles of someone tearing apart another poor unsuspecting victim.

Day break today, 'Benefits: Don't cut my £32,000 hand out', in big bold letters framing the agenda and then Lorraine Kelly had a woman named Clare on and made sure to highlight the fact she had seven children. Lorraine Kelly then had the nerve to say: "Thanks for coming in, a lot of people have been tweeting in to have a go at you, some in support of you, but mainly saying you take home more than they earn." Clare seemed nervous, but then you would if you knew you were on national television being put up for people to focus their anger and aggression on for the austerity and poverty that is ripping through our society at the moment. Clare's response was disappointing in that she pointed fingers at others, claiming it was unfair a family of four and a family of seven should be on the same rate, what Clare should have said is: "Yes Lorraine, it is because people like you and the rest of the prestitutes are pushing a fascist agenda to demonise poor people ahead of the next general election. You see it is easy to control us and get away with daylight robbery when you have us fighting amongst ourselves, rather than stopping to take a look and ask what you lot are up to and question the banks."

Sat alongside this poor lady was another woman, a journalist named Anne Atkins, who could not wait to get her claws out ready to strike Clare down. Sympathy she said, yes, but Anne called for imaginative ways to work from home, imaginative ways to eat by eating cheap healthy food... Is she joking? It is not cheap to eat healthily, if you want to eat crap then you can eat cheap. If you want to eat healthy then it will cost you a pretty penny.

Clare explained the tough time she is having raising one of her children who has special requirements and eventually managed to bring the story round to one of a lack of support from the government in helping her get back to work. This is something I know is a problem for families first hand when parents, often single parents, are told that it is more beneficial for them to rely on the state than to go back to work. These are people that WANT to go back to work but are being discouraged by the very people who then collate statistics, manipulate them and beat the people round the head with every day in the media. You could not make it up.

As with all news these days the situation is not taken in any context whatsoever. This story took place several hours after the BBC published an article about wage repression in the UK today. The report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the fall in nominal wages during the recession was unprecedented. They are calling it the productivity puzzle, I would call it the wage slave conundrum.

Essentially people are not retiring and and lone parents are not withdrawing from the debt slave market at a time when we are going through the longest and deepest recession in a century. The sooner people start calling it by its real name, a depression, the sooner we can start to come to terms with dealing with the issue. The IFS said workers were better off to stay in work with lower wages rather than be unemployed. The government has said that the labour market has remained strong despite the downturn but they fail to realise that people are not staying in these wage repressed conditions through choice, they are doing so because the government have a vice like grip around our throats and are pushing their ideological austerity upon us.

Debt slaves: buying stuff we don't need, with money that's not real, to impress people we don't know.

One interesting comment from the IFS was that fewer workers today are unionised or covered by collective wage agreements and that as a result they tended to see smaller, if any, wage increases. Unfortunately many of those people that are in unions seem to be hamstrung by the weight of history and seemingly unable or unwilling to rise and make change to the world they are helping to create.
By the time I went to work the unions had largely been smashed by Thatcher and Thatcherism and the UK is now one of the few countries in Europe, who's workers are without the right to withdraw their labour, as covered by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Unions and their members across the country today are under attack for no other reason than ideology because the corporations and our politicians do not want people to have fair and equitable living wages and conditions.
There has never been a more important time for the people to rise up, join together, stop pointing fingers at the poor and realise our problems are not the making of a few on benefits but those power hungry criminals in the city of corruption.

Monday, 10 June 2013

Week 11, the week when the lid on Orwellian society blew up in the states face. If you did not think it before you will now, we are living in Orwell's 1984 but don't worry, you have nothing to fear.

Human Rights: PRISM - EDWARD SNOWDEN and Bradley Manning
The Guardian and the Washington Post blew open the sensational news that the UK and US governments have been colluding to spy on civilian data using the US National Security Agency ((NSA) program Prism. The man responsible is Edward Snowden, a former employee of the CIA, and he has fled to Hong Kong boasting of their history for supporting freedom of speech and expression. Quite amusing considering he is from the supposed land of the free. Today however the mainstream media have been climbing over themselves to inform us that Snowden's belief he will not be extradited from Hong Kong may be short sighted and wrong. The US are said to have gathered the data of millions if not billions of calls and interactions with the GCHQ perhaps piggy backing this to circumvent laws that prevent the UK currently from eaves dropping on people here. William Hague has come out in defence of the scandal and said that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. It is just a shame that ethos does not stretch as far as the closed Bilderberg meeting that took place this week in Watford. How long though is it before the person who has nothing to fear becomes a dissident, or an unruly activist unhappy with the fascist regime at the say so of the state and then they too fall under this umbrella of 'extremism'. Some will say we sit on the precipice of the slippery slop of no return but I would say we have already crossed that point, with the three year detention of Bradley Manning, who went on trial this week for leaking documents to Wikileaks, for exposing grotesque abuses and war crimes by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The state does not appreciate the torch being shone upon the darkest recesses of their closets it seems.
Edward Snowden said he could not work and live in a world where surveillance of everyday people was being conducted in the way it was.
It is a mad world that we live in. When two men who have exposed corruption, war crimes, human rights atrocities and breaches of a fundamental human right, the right to a private life, in the supposed pursuit of our safety in the face of terrorism, are deemed enemies of the state; yet war criminals such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Tony Blair and David Cameron are continually allowed to encroach on our freedoms and liberties and export death, destruction and cancer (via depleted uranium) in countries where brown people reside.

The very fact that people like darling David Cameron and William Hague are trying to convince that everything is OK should be enough to set warning bells off in people. Barack Obama openly came out and lied by saying that no one was listening to people's phone calls, he then went on to say: "We cannot expect 100% security and 100% privacy and zero inconvenience and that we'll have to make some choices as a society.". This lot are the least noble and honest amongst and we should all be concerned about where all this is heading. At the time of writing this, William Hague was facing questions in the Houses of Parliament by MP's, all twenty of them.

The PM has announced his intentions to crusade against lobbying, shamelessly using it as an opportunity to attack trade unions and the labour party. The lobbying scandal which has been dominating the news is amusing in as much as the idea that unions benefit from supporting the Labour Party in any way shape or form is ludicrous. The biggest backers of political parties are the corporations and I seem to recall Rupert Murdoch media being the biggest back of Labour last time they were i power pushing his war agenda.

The lobbying scandal comes at the same time as the Bilderberg descended upon sunny Hertfordshire. No mention of course about the great political lobbying scandal going on at the Bilderberg meeting held in Watford this year, not that these liars, thieves, cheats and scoundrels need to meet up once a year in a 'secret' venue to rule the world when they all socialise in the same circles. Both Cameron and George Osborne have previously stated their intention to drive a wrecking ball of transparency through the political system but have yet to start this process such is the murky world in which they operate. Ken Clarke has today been trying to persuade MP's that there is nothing going on at Bilderberg but when We Are Change interviewed Tony Blair recently we got perhaps the most honest two minutes of his life.

Race hatred... This week a Muslim boarding school was set on fire in the middle of the night as tensions in the UK continue following the death of Lee Rigby and is the second such incident involving arson in the past two weeks. Police are investigating as it appears the scene had been branded by an EDL sign. Not content with soldiers physically abusing Muslim children in Afghanistan the EDL seem intent on burning them in their sleep.

Health/Education and Welfare
Labour this week proved themselves the other side of the mask shared by the Tories with Miliband's speech on welfare. He repeated right wing rhetoric of society viewing the system as being "given something for nothing" and served only to demonise people who struggle. What is the alternative to ideological austerity? There is none if you are looking at the two party state we live within.

Having sent them out to do their dirty work for the past ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq, the government has now decided to put our troops to use in schools by fast tracking to become teachers when they return. Some schools students will feel right at home with a militarised way of being educated as they have embarked on making their students pledge everyday first thing in the morning.

World
Treyvon Martin, remember him? This week the jury is being selected for the Zimmerman trial. This murder divided opinion across both sides of the Atlantic and we will see whether there is justice or whether it is just-us.

In Australia the DJ who made a prank phone call to the hospital Kate was staying has won an award and it has been branded as "bad taste." Ironic considering we have a serving President who won a Nobel Peace Prize for saying stuff he did not mean and then proliferated the drone wars which we are seeing escalate on an almost weekly basis. Is that not bad taste?

Entertainment

The UK entertainment industry has been a cesspool and hive of sexual debauchery in recent months with the latest celebrity to be linked to child sex offences being Ken Roach, better known as Ken Barlow on Coronation Street, to most of you.

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

The education system has been hijacked, for centuries it has been based around the industrial revolution focusing on the key subjects of maths, English and science.

Do not get me wrong, I believe there is a place for these in our education system, mathematics for example is the only true universal language we have as the schematics and designs by someone on one side of the planet could be replicated by someone on the other side of the planet and it does of course dovetail nicely with science. Aside from the obvious question of whether our schools are teaching our children what to think, rather than how to think, the issue arises where we have to sacrifice the creative elements of our education system in favour of the stuff that our peers deem to be "the important stuff."

Are you listening Michael Gove?

Naturally this means the arts get dropped to squeeze in another technology based course but this mode of thinking does not take in to account that we are a society made up of individuals and it is this very thing that gives us the varied life we have. I remember having to choose a subject I had no interest or intention of pursing in the future ahead of another that today I could have done with the background knowledge of.

This has not stopped me pursuing it later in life but how many children do we cast aside in their formative years, who may never get the time or money to pursue a dream later on?

Sir Ken Robinson, a champion of education in all its varieties, has made two speeches at the TED Talks, one in 2006 I believe and another in May 2013, where he explained how as a society we are stifling creativity in our children. This is not a problem just of the education system but unfortunately of us as parents too. How many times have any of us heard or been told that we will never be musicians, or to concentrate on school because being a successful artist is for the 'lucky' ones?

We should be embracing not only our children's creative endeavours but remembering our own, we are all born artists but we have it educated out of us.

There is a belief amongst some that the reasoning for creativity being educated out of us is that if you can kill the artist, you can kill the protest.

Bill Hicks came up with the notion first in 1989 during his Sane Man tour when he compared the Coca-Cola pop groups, such as Debbie Gibson and Rick Astley, to Jimi Hendrix. More recently the Artist Taxi Driver and I talked of the boy band explosion of the 1990's, with Take That versus The Prodigy at the time who were everything the establishment hated, epitomised by the release of firestarter in 1997 and then came Simon Cowell.

Since the turn of the millennium, Simon Cowell and his manufactured pop groups have dominated the music scene with real artists very far and few between, a protest campaign was launched in 2009 to get Rage Against the Machine to number one to stop the annual Cowell Christmas number one domination highlighted the issue quite starkly, with a song that has been out of the charts for a decade taking top spot just to say no, we won't do what you tell us.

Terence McKenna once said we are lead by the least amongst us, the least intelligent, the least noble and the least visionary, when asked how we fight back he said we make art. So that is the task we have, to remember the artist within us and go out and express ourselves however we do it best.

“The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. If artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.” ~ Terence McKenna

The punishment for these soldiers has amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist with one soldier fined £1000 for asking a child to touch his special place and another has been reduced in rank. The judge advocate had said that there was no sexual motive behind the behaviour, yet if that happened in any place in the UK there would be outrage and he would have been put on the sex offenders list. A third officer, the man in charge of these soldiers was cleared as not being in the public interests to pursue him in the light of the guilty pleas from the others.

I am not sure what to think any more. Are we saying after this that it is OK to abuse brown boys but not white ones? The message set by the judge in this case seems to be that the lives of the people in Afghanistan are worth less than those in the UK and though the actions of these three do not represent the entire British Army, it does raise the question of how these fellow humans are viewed in the theatre of war. Perhaps people have not been upset by this because the media have not told them to be.

In another twist the three soldiers have been given anonymity under the reason of safety and security for them and their families, what about the safety and security of the families trying to rebuild their lives in the ashes of Afghanistan and Iraq under the haze of depleted uranium?

If we want to end the war on terror then first we must stop waging a war of terror.

Sunday, 2 June 2013

You could not make it up. Week after week the 'you couldn't make it up' files get ever more outlandish.

Privatisation The art of stealing tax payers money and lining their economic terrorist mates pockets. Darling David Cameron and jolly George Osborne, not content with secret courts, now want to privatise them. What? Something that seems to be lost on this bunch of blood thirsty, soul sucking vampires is that these public services are there to provide its citizens with a service, they are not there to make money and profit for their private profiteers mates.If this was not bad enough private firms will soon be sending astronauts into space, giving us the Coca-Cola moon.Human RightsThe former head of MI5, Stella Rimington, has said we should be spying on our neighbours to assist domestic security if we "did not want a stazi state" because the enemy is everywhere. I am not sure what books she has read or where she went to school but is that not exactly the sort of thing that the Nazi's did in the 1930's? This sort of fear mongering and hate inducement is scandalous, we are living in a time where our liberties are being taken away from us in broad daylight and they are trying every underhanded way of justifying it.Economics
Mervyn King stands down as head of the Bank of England (home of the banking terrorists and daddy's pig) and says he is taking a gap year. Nice that he can afford to sun himself whilst the rest of the pensioners have to go back to work to help themselves out of fuel poverty. He has also come out and said that he thought people in the UK had a right to be angry with banks following the economic crises, but that we would have come out and been angrier sooner. Strange he should wait till he stands down to question why we have not taken to the streets sooner but we agree with him. First you have to get mad and it just seems like far too many people are worried about what J-Lo was wearing on Britain's Got Talent.

Iain Duncan-Smith, the £39 breakfast man who says we can live on £53 a week has announced that he can afford to have a further £3bn cut from his department of Work and Pensions (DWP) in a bid to protect the police and military budgets. A disgusting claim and boast from a hideous individual. We spend billions on illegal wars and arming Syrian rebels and now this man wants to further cut the assistance to people in need to perpetuate war, mistrust and hatred.
This is being backed up by other departments such as from the Ministry for Justice and Department for Local Government, the latter for which have just had the Ken Knight Review into the Fire Service who made bold claims about how much could be cut from the sector, without giving any background or context to the debate whatsoever.

Technology
The technology world is going stark raving mad. After last weeks announcement of the drone army being used by the German Rail company to chase graffiti artists, Motorola have crossed the line of the absurd by creating a solution to all those passwords we have to remember in the digital age. It is called the electronic tattoo. Not content with that step towards Rfid chipping they have also come up with a pill we can all swallow that is powered by stomach acids that can supply our gadgets with the codes we need to log in.

The Chinese have been flexing their muscles over the disputed islands in the South China sea, claiming that the islands there have been part of their territory since ancient times. This is an argument they fail to recognise when discussing Tibet as once upon a history the Chinese Emperor had to give a princess to the Tibetan Lord such was their strength and power and the region in the 17th Century, throwing into question their belief that it was always 'their territory'. In the end what do any one of us ever really own?

William Hague was on the radio this week explaining how we comply with International law when talking about the Syrian arms embargo being lifted. I almost choked on my lemon water as he said it recalling the current illegal wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Friday, 31 May 2013

A quick flick through this week's Mail on Sunday was enough to almost push you over the edge.

The Daily Mail has for the last decade or so waged a one paper campaign against the green energy brigade. This week (and the umpteenth time this year) they have run stories on the great green con and ran a top 10 myths on the green energy fiasco as they are calling it. At one point they even had the audacity to raise concern at a government minister who received £250,000 from a green energy company, that went on subsequently to write a report for the government to promote renewable energy. Strange then they have not much to say about Tory think tank lobbyists getting work in downing St and advising our darling David Cameron on carving up the public services.

A documentary by rock star physicist Brian Cox on BBC's Horizon, 'Can we build a star?' discussed at great lengths the energy crises we face in the not so distant future and the problem we have with trying to accommodate a growing demand as the planets population continues to grow, using the current fossil fuel based mode of thinking. The Mail on Sunday this week despite using a double page spread to try and debunk the renewable energy supporters had a page dedicated in the business and finance section stating that oil consumption will double by 2020. It was a very confused edition of the hate rag.

The key to their arguments are claims that the world has not warmed up for 16 years, they do not mention so much the fact we have passed 400 ppm of carbon but then hardly anyone noticed and like I tell my work colleagues, climate and weather are like form and class in the sporting arena. One is temporary and the other is permanent.

The Mail along with the majority of other mainstream media outlets are pushing support for shale gas and fracking. They are claiming it is cost neutral compared to fossil fuel mining and that the cost to the environment is negligible. They always claim this when they embark on a risky new venture and this is no exception. There are legitimate concerns on the process of hydraulic fracturing and we should be mindful of the reasons for why the government and the media machine are so keen to push for this ahead of clean renewable energy.

Monday, 27 May 2013

Bank Holiday special...there is nothing about this bank holiday that makes it special. This week has turned me inside out following the horrendous murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich and a little closer to home, another young life was snuffed out in the on going gang war in Luton.

Whatever people think of the events in Woolwich this week, murder is murder and is abhorrent whatever the underlying cause.

Luton has this year witnessed upwards of 18 incidents involving firearms and blades resulting in serious and fatal injuries. Just last night the news reported of the fatal stabbing of a 'man aged 20 years old'.
At 20 he was not a man, he was only just starting out on his journey in life and will leave behind heart broken family who's lives will be forever changed.
A few weeks ago as the shooting incidents in Luton were soaring, I wrote to newly elected Police Crime Commissioner Olly Martins asking what he was doing to assist in dealing with the root causes of crime in society, namely the socio-economic environment in which we live in, but as yet have had no response. In the interim he has said of the escalation in gun crime and murders within Luton that it was "a blip", going to prove once again that we are lead by the least amongst us.

Somehow we have become a society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, especially the value of a human life.

NEWS - Health and Welfare
The week started off quite badly with BBC R4 holding a phone in to discuss peoples experiences of A&E and ambulances, what disappointed most was the insistence on people across the NHS pointing the finger of blame at each other, rather than at the government and their banking friends, for the issues they are having. So long as we keep in fighting the power brokers will keep playing their game of monopoly and leave us with nothing but the scraps off of the table.

A woman who suffered a DOUBLE heart and lung transplant died 9 days after her benefits were stopped after ATOS found her fit to work. She was notified of her requirement to return to work as she lay on her hospital bed dying.
This lot are disgusting. People who are quite clearly in need of help and assistance are being thrown over board by this government under the ideology of austerity.

The constructive dismantling of the NHS seems to know no bounds and yet the resistance being offered by the public seems to be few and far between. It is the greatest thing we have ever conceived and yet we are allowing it go out without a fight.

World
Barack Obama laid out the law on drones this week when he addressed the planet about the program but got heckled by someone from project Codepink. During his speech he highlighted the importance of ensuring that partner nations could not deal with the individuals they wanted to target before resorting to drones. What most news agencies failed to capture or show, including the BBC morning news, was his statement that civilian casualties were "hard facts". His words were not comforting. His words have damned him and his administration.

Human Rights/Politics
The Woolwich murder has seen the Communications and Data Bill rise its ugly head again with news reports that the Tory and Labour Ministers will form a pact to get the act passed as the Lib Dems seem to be opposing it, which is perhaps the only decent thing they have done since they took joint office. The evidence is inconclusive as to whether any such act being in force today would have made any difference to the incident last week in Woolwich, but then they will probably say that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. This statement is fine of course until it is something that you do care about, that you want to stand up for, and the establishment then labels you an extremist and you are starting down that slippery slope.
It was not helped by Theresa May banging the drums of fear quoting estimates of the number of people who are potential targets for radicalisation in the thousands and then claiming she wants tighter reigns on extremist websites, social media channels and the like.
What the definition of extremism will be is anyones guess.

TechnologyGermany are to use drones to combat graffiti. Having been to Berlin I can say first hand that it is home to some of the most amazing urban art. This move to combat it is a surprise to me as it actually would be one reason I would advocate going to Berlin to see some of the art there. More worryingly it is the move by local enforcement agencies to engage in the use of drones increasingly, proving that a drone is not just for the Middle East, but for you and I.

Friday, 24 May 2013

This week a soldier was run over and attacked with machetes in a savage attack in Woolwich, London. The man, 25 year old, Lee Rigby leaves behind a son aged 2.

We have seen much of the events as they unfolded yesterday, images of a man holding blades covered in blood telling us that our "governments do not care about us" and that scenes like this occur everyday in their countries. BBC Political correspondent Nick Robinson described the assailants as "Muslim in appearance" causing outrage amongst sections of the community and also explained how his initial thoughts were of a terrorist act being carried out.

What we have witnessed since this senseless murder is the framing of events by the media and the establishment. Time and again over the past 24hrs the media have stated intelligence agencies have been concerned for some time that this was the type of attack they feared most, but were unable or unprepared to deal with and so prompting the push for a further curtailing of our liberties with renewed vigour for the Data and Communications Bill.

The narrative being used to reinforce and remind us that Muslim's are terrorists is strong and has been since 9/11, but this was not always the case.

For twenty five years or more the Irish were the symbol for terrorism and terrorists in the UK, a fact that winds up many a passenger at transport hubs such as airports when they complain during random stop and searches. A favourite quip would be "Do I look like a terrorist?"

Yesterday's events took a terrible toll on all involved and the consequences of the actions of those two individuals could have far reaching affects for this country as a whole if we let it. Those who witnessed it first hand will have had their worlds turned upside down for what could be years. A comment from one of the attackers was that violence such as that occurs on their streets every day. In Afghanistan and Iraq that is true and it is hard time for us all to sit and take stock of what acts of terrorism we have been complicit in as a country.

The people in these countries have no voice. They have no media run states framing the agenda to play out their heartache for us to see or hear. There has been a river of tears shed in the Afghanistan and Iraq over the lies fed to us by Tony Blair and George W. Bush.
Martin Luther King Jnr once said that the greatest purveyors of violence were his own government (of the Vietnam war) and so the sins of the past return to haunt us, as the same is true of our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. To think we are innocent of the bloodshed is to be naive and live in denial. Bush, Blair, Cameron and Obama have as much blood on their hands as the man who addressed the stunned onlookers in Woolwich this week.

So long as our governments keep exporting fear and terror through the barrel of a gun or a drone we will not be able to claim peace. Has anything they have done in the 'war against terror' done anything to make the world feel like a safer place? If anything it has become a war of terror.

This terror is fed on fear and we have plenty of that going around at the moment. The EDL descended on Woolwich intent on having a riot and claiming that this attack was an example of the reason they existed. They fought with police, the leader, Stephen Lennon has a record for it too and they have a lot to say about Muslim grooming gangs, but nothing of the celebrity sex scandal engulfing television with Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville and Co being outed every week. They prey on people and this time is the turn of the already traumatised people of Woolwich with a brand of patriotism that has previously been discredited by Sandra Oh from Grey's Anatomy, reading Emma Goldman's speech.

The fear being induced by the media, security services and our governments insistence in exporting war, is compounded by a lack of understanding. Facebook and Twitter have been awash with people Muslim bashing, black bashing and calling for a wide range of barbaric tortures themselves to punish those responsible for the soldiers death. Is this really the world they want for their children? Violence begets violence and Martin Luther King said that darkness cannot drive out darkness and that only light can do that. Even on my own social media feeds I have had to field some of the worst, fascist rhetoric regarding what has happened as people's emotions have run high.

Things doing the rounds on the social media sites include some of the following;

Questions have been posed as to the human rights of those that took part in the attack. Fortunately for us all human rights are there for the needs of the many and the actions of a few should not lead to the acts that serve and protect us being torn up for something lesser.

On the question of 7/7 and the lack of compensation for the victims going about their day job that are flying around the social media sites, who's fault is that? The governments, not Muslims.

The solider was apparently wearing a Help for Heroes T-Shirt and now every one is being encouraged to buy and support them. Why do we have a Help for Heroes Charity in the first place? Because the government does not provide for the men and women it sends out there to get blown up fighting illegal wars. Who's fault? The government.

Before condemning an entire religion we must look to take everything that happens in some kind of context and for all those labelling all Muslim's as extremists, attacking Mosques and calling for action remember this, just as not every Muslim is an extremist, neither were all Catholics, nor did all Christians want to gas Jews or wear white hoods and drag black people along the tarmac behind their trucks but some people from all of these religions have done just these very things. It does not make the religions evil, if there is such a thing, it means that a minority of individuals should not be responsible for the condemnation of an entire group. For anyone calling for those hangings, beheadings and mob justice should take a moment to look in the mirror and ask yourself if what you are asking for will do anything to make the world a better, safer place for you and your children?

No problems but human problems - one species

The only way for us to break free of these cycles of hatred is to first stop participating in them.

We must start to view ourselves as one species, the human species with common problems and not separate races. We must learn to understand the truth behind the language we use and realise we are masters of it and not slaves to it and begin to create our own reality, one that is crafted from love and not fear and hate, free from all forms of terror.

What cannot be taken away from what has happened this week and what overrides the entirety of the wider debate is the future of the young boy left behind without a father and the prospect of growing up in a world escalating ever more in hatred, mistrust and fear, a world that we have a duty to change for the better for us all.

Thursday, 23 May 2013

Yesterday the Artist Taxi Driver crawled from 10 Downing St to the Bank of England pushing a toy pig in a an art show to raise awareness of NHS privatisation. There may be better things that could be done on a Wednesday day in London but I doubt there was anything more important.

He was joined by up to 100 people at times and a man with a toy fire engine, who pushed it with him every step of the 4 miles. At times the effort was palpable as we crawled side by side, unified by a common theme of justice for the people in the face of these private profiteers.

At one point the cry went up "there's no justice, there's just us."

The Artist Taxi Driver had an interview with a banker at 1530 on the corruption taking part on the watch of successive governments with a banker on the steps of the Royal Exchange. The pair were spurred on by the crowd as they took the issue to the streets with what the Artist Taxi Driver calls "the pigs at the trough" of public sector money. Our government are allowing friends in faceless corporations steal away money from the private sector with the sole gain to make profit for themselves.

What we are left with as a public are worse services and we are at the mercy of their greed as they drive up prices. Rail fares and energy price hikes are great examples of this.

The NHS is being attacked by by vociferous and rapacious vultures in private industry. These corporations are having the NHS Trusts fed to them on a plate by our government and the media are aiding in their demise. HSBC who are guilty of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels now own three NHS Trusts in Middlesex, Barnet and West Middlesex and the Private Finance Investment scam is draining the life blood of our NHS as it means our government are borrowing money from the private sector at a rate twice that they could create themselves. With the exception of the Artist Taxi Driver there seems to be a distinct lack of advocates for the NHS and on a recent radio phone in on BBC R4, people from across the NHS called in to point the finger of blame at each other for their problems, rather than at the banking terrorists that created these problems in the first place with their wild and obscene gambling at the casino.

Recent FBU national ampaign

The Fire Service are facing the most dangerous cuts in recent memory. The government squeeze on the budget is forcing brigades across the country to modify their delivery and cut back on staffing and crewing arrangements which put firefighter and public lives at risk. This is being brought to a head by two things, a letter from the current Fire Minister and the recent release of the Ken Knight Review.

The privatisation of the Fire Service is being done via the boiling frog theory, similarly to how the NHS has over the years, bits and pieces are auctioned off in the slaughter house and before you know it a once perfectly functioning service is owned and run by private profiteers. The emergency services are there to provide a service, not to make a profit and this small fact seems to be lost on the government and their friends.

A lot of the main focus has been on London Fire Brigade who are facing the closure of 12 stations and the loss of 500 jobs as a direct result of the governments ideological austerity plans, but these stories are replicated across the UK. Already the media have begun to shape the agenda by focusing strongly on the Ken Knight review who said that "fire calls had reduced by 40% in the last decade but the resource to demand had not been reviewed as a consequence." This statement, when taken without any context whatsoever, might lead you to believe what is being said. Everything a firefighter responds to is called a 'fire call', it does not necessarily mean that they are responding to a fire, it could be any one of a hundred different things that they can (and do) respond to. The statement when taken in to relation of incidents of fire may be true but it does not account for everything else.

For instance, it does not reflect that up until 2004 there was no statutory duty for the Fire Service to attend a Road Traffic Collision, it was just inferred that they would. Road Traffic Collision incident figures will vary greatly depending on where you live and the resources for which those brigades have to respond to them. It also makes no reference to flooding incidents, which you may have noticed, have been on the increase over the lat few years and in a recent report was highlighted as the single biggest national resilience issue to face the emergency services in the next decade. You will not be surprised to learn then that the government have NOT made it a statutory duty for the Fire Service to respond to flooding incidents, instead letting each individual brigade foot the bill for equipment and training to respond to these incidents so that they do not have to dip into their war chests. this further puts strains on the other day to day tasks that Fire Services have to deal with.

The Ken Knight report did not talk about the health and safety and welfare of the firefighters and the public, it mentioned nothing of an increase in firefighter deaths, with the only comprehensive report being conducted by the Fire Brigades Union back in 2008. It is with much sadness I must say that since that report there have been further firefighter fatalities and lessons still have not been learned.

The cuts are about agendas. These billionaires play with peoples futures and peoples lives and they are stealing the dreams away of this and the next generation of firefighters, police and NHS staff. They all beautiful people that devote a life time of service to the communities they live and work in. The betrayal of their devotion by our government is shameful. Support your local NHS, Police and Fire Service, talk to them directly and do not be mislead by the mainstream media. They are there for us, whenever we call.

Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Today the Artist Taxi Driver is pushing a toy pig on his hands and knees in his second leg from number 10 Downing St to the Bank of England.

This piece of art is aimed at the government intentions to privatise the NHS. At 3 miles it is slightly shorter than the first leg from Kings College Hospital to Downing St but the effort required is the same.

This time we have a double act art piece with the issue surrounding government plans to privatise another frontline public service, the fire service. A a toy fire engine is being pushed with corporations emblazoned down the side of it.

The message to the people is simple, defend your services, ask more questions and just say no.